The public involvement system concerning environmental laws and regulations in the U. S. is examined, and compared with that in Japan. Comparison is made from two viewpoints : (1) the public involvement system about laws and regulations and (2) social and cultural backgrounds for development of the public involvement system. The comparison of the system prescribed in laws and regulations is made at three different levels of administrative decision making action, namely, designing of environmental policy at national level, setting environmental protection priorities in an agency, and establishing regulations for the implementation of environmental laws. No significant difference is found in the action of establishing regulations. However, the more important the kind of decision-making action is, such as designing national environmental legislation or setting environmental protection priorities, the more the difference between the U. S. and Japan become striking. Social and cultural backgrounds, and their effect on the development and support of the involvement and participation system are also examined. An outstanding difference is how the involvement system is supported by the public, although there is not such a big difference about the needs of establishing a participation system. Public involvement system in Japan needs to be improved after such differences into consideration.

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The 5th grade school children, a total of 1, 401, from 20 elementary schools in Miyagi Prefecture were investigated by a questionnaire to examine the relationship between the living environment and the health such as respiratory symptoms and allergy. Considering the effects of automobile exhand and agricultural chmicals, their living environment was classified into four ; 1) city area, 2) suburban area, 3) small town (surrounded with farming area), 4) agricultural area. Prevalence rates of respiratory symptoms and allergy were in the following order; city > suburban > small town > agricultural area. The prevalence rates of currently having any allergy and pollinosis were statistically higher in the city area. Air pollutant concentrations such as NO₂ and SPM were highest in the city area and lowest in the agricultural area. It was noted that indoor environments were extremely different among the areas. Statistically significant higher rates in the city area were found as follows ; houses made of reinforced concrete, houses constructed or reformed within 3 years, smoking mothers, indoor pets such as birds and dogs, the use of carpets and vinyl chloride wall materials. It is considered that the indoor environment as well as air pollution due to traffic affect children's health condition.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate citizen's preferences to the greenbelt project undertaken in Mt. Rokko, Hyogo and to value the externalities of the forest based on the citizen's preferences. The use of choice experiment, a type of stated preference method allows us to take into account the value of ecosystem which was not so often to be considered in a project evaluation. By comparing the estimated result of conditional logit model and nested logit model, it is shown that the latter is more reliable, and that, in selecting estimation method, it is important to consider the similarities between alternatives. According to the nested logit model, citizens valuethe function of recreational site and of preserving ecosystem (statistically significant), while they have a high valuation for the function of preventing soil erosion and landslide, c2 preventing flood and fostering water resource and (3) preserving living environment. Moreover, the possibility of the use of the valuation result in a policy-making is examined. This examination reveals that it has meaningful information which reflects citizen's preferences to the environment, and that it is useful for forecasting the social response to the policy which influences on the environment.

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Contingent Valuation (CV) has become one of the most frequently used environmental valuation techniques in recent research developments. However, environmental valuation through stated preference such as CV might be biased because of the hypothetical nature of the collected data. Nevertheless, credibility of CV results in Japan has rarely been focused in the past research. We conducted CV questionnaire on organic vegetables as an example and compare questionnaire results with sales experiments in retail stores, which accompanies real payments. As a result, it was made clear that average Willingness to Pay (WTP) in CV is approximately 55% larger than sales experiments. It might be problematic to use CV results directly in cost-benefit analysis. Production cost of organic vegetables is calculated and used as supply curve in surplus analysis along with demand curve estimated through CV. Organic vegetable production will not automatically raise consumers' welfare level due to the higher price attributed to higher production cost. Production incentive for producers is quite low according to decrease in sale amount due to the severe competition against substitute goods. Wage per unit hour received by farmers will also be reduced because of the longer labor hour inputted in organic vegetable production. Social benefit of waste reduction brought by organic vegetable production has to be internalized by constructing incentive scheme. Governmental subsidies are one of the policy options that have to be considered.

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In order to investigate the budget of sulfur oxides in continental areas of East Asia, the transport and wet deposition of sulfur oxides were calculated using an Eulerian transport model for several cases. The calculated wet depositions have been compared with the monthly averaged sulfur concentrations in precipitation observed at 69 locations widely covering China from July of 1992 through January of 1993 . Atmospheric concentration of sulfur dioxide along the east coast of the continent was also compared with the airborne observation carried out in May of 1993. Basing on these results, the budget of sulfur oxides in China was examined . The relationship among the outflow from the east coast to the sea areas and the seasonal variations of wet deposition distribution, and the pathways of atmospheric sulfur oxides in the continental areas. In winter, monthly amount of outflow from the east coast of China increased to about three times as large as that in summer . It was also found that the decreases in inland areas of northern China largely influenced the outflow from the east coast in winter.

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Characteristics of copper (Cu) -resistant bacterial communities in a rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere of a ditch reed, Phragmites sp., in highly Cu-contaminated area near a copper mine were investigated. In the rhizosphere, multiplication of bacteria, particularly non-resistant bacteria, was promoted as compared with the nonrhizosphere. The properties of bacterial community in the rhizosphere were largely different from those in the nonrhizosphere in Cu sorption. growth rate, and exopolymers production. Both Cu-resistant bacteria and non-resistant bacteria in the rhizosphere grew more rapidly in a medium than those in the nonrhizosphere. For almost all the isolates with Cu resistance, exopolymer productions were prompted by Cu stimuli expecially for the Cu-resistant bacteria from the rhizosphere. The adverse effect of Cu on the growth rate, was found to be small for the Cu-resistant bacteria producing exopolymers in large quantity, suggesting the involvement of exopolymers in detoxification of Cu.

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